Parenting Adult Children: Lessons from King Lear

Posted on January 26, 2016 by Bob Ritzema
Lear Disowning Cordelia

Lear Disowning Cordelia

In November I saw a Calvin College production of Shakespeare’s King Lear. Intrigued, I then read the play. Lear is elderly and wishes to step aside from the burdens of ruling. He has three daughters and plans to divide his kingdom among them. His way of deciding who is to get what is at best unwise and at worst likely to generate incredible turmoil. He says,

Tell me, my daughters,
Since now we will divest us both of rule,
Interest of territory, cares of state,
Which of you shall we say doth love us most?
That we our largest bounty may extend
Where nature doth with merit challenge. (Act I, Scene 1, Lines 50-55)

(Note: line numbers taken from Signet Classic Edition)

In other words, if you tell me that you love me the most, I’ll give you a larger portion of the kingdom. The oldest two daughters, Goneril and Regan, oblige by exaggerated professions of love. Goneril, for example claims:

No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honour;
As much as child e’er loved, or father found;
A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable;
Beyond all manner of so much I love you. (I:1:60-63)

Dismayed by her sisters’ insincere praise, Cordelia, the youngest daughter and formerly her father’s favorite, refuses to enter the competition:

Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty
According to my bond; nor more nor less. (I:1:93-95)

Enraged, Lear disinherits Cordelia, dividing her portion between Goneril and Regan. It soon becomes clear that Cordelia is the only one that truly loves Lear. Goneril and Regan, who had promised to alternate housing him, quickly tire of having him around. One after the other, each pushes him to leave her castle and deprives him of the contingent of knights they agreed to support. Infuriated, Lear prepares to leave. Even though he is old, it is night, and a terrible storm is brewing, neither daughter tries to dissuade him. When the Earl of Gloucester points out the hazardous conditions, Regan replies coldly:

O, sir, to wilful men,
The injuries that they themselves procure
Must be their schoolmasters. Shut up your doors. (II:4:302-304)

Lear ostensibly has bestowed a great favor on his daughters by giving them his kingdom. He seems to think he has acted in love. If Lear loves at all, though, he loves conditionally. If, as with Cordelia, a child doesn’t do or say what the parent wants, all signs of love are withdrawn. Lear is seemingly incapable of unconditional love. Such love doesn’t always give the child what he or she wants, but it always values the child and does what seems to be in the child’s best interest.

Young children need their parents’ love, but so do older children, adolescents, and adults. In my work as a psychologist, I regularly meet with adult clients who are hurting because one or both parents were and still are unloving towards them. One woman is constantly told that she is incompetent and will fail; another is repeatedly informed that her brother has always been a better child, a third has repeatedly been given the message that she isn’t to have any life of her own but has to take care of everyone else in the family. I suspect that each client’s parent believes that he or she loves the child. Yet any affection or affirmation that they give is highly conditional; it’s withdrawn whenever the child doesn’t follow the script the parent has laid out, regardless how onerous and harmful that script is. If they deviate, they are treated like Cordelia, cast out of the kingdom.

You might imagine that the two older sisters, on seeing that Lear’s favorite has lost her position, would try to stay in his graces. They already have his kingdom, though, and, probably because of how he has treated them all along, it no longer matters to them what he thinks of them. The sisters agree that he has exercised poor judgment in rejecting Cordelia. Here’s their take on what has happened:

REGAN ‘Tis the infirmity of his age: yet he hath ever but slenderly known himself.

GONERIL The best and soundest of his time hath been but rash; then must we look to receive from his age, not alone the imperfections of long-engraffed condition, but therewithal the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with them. (I:1:295-302)

In other words, at his best our dad was highly flawed, and he’s gotten even worse with age. Parents who love conditionally not only harm their children but also ruin their children’s regard for them. Regan and Goneril may have come out on top, but they know full well that outcome was the result of manipulation. People seldom look favorably on those they have manipulated. Parents who, like Lear, ask for falsehoods from their children may get those falsehoods, but are likely to lose their children’s esteem in the process.

There’s much more to learn about parent-child relationships from Lear and his daughters. I’ll explore their relationship further in another post.

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“Mr. Holmes”–A Reflection

Posted on January 18, 2016 by Bob Ritzema

This isn’t a review, but a reflection. The movies that intrigue me do so because they explore questions like how we should live our lives, what makes for good (and bad) relationships, and how we come to be made whole or broken, saved or lost. I write about those movies to engage these and similar issues.  

Mr. Holmes

Mr. Holmes, the movie about an aging Sherlock Holmes (played by Ian McKellen), was in theaters last summer, but I only saw it recently, on DVD. Holmes is in his 90s and has been living quietly in a country house for 30 years. With him are Mrs. Munro, a widowed housekeeper (Laura Linney), and her son Roger (Milo Parker), who is quite taken with the old detective. Holmes is plagued by memory difficulties. Whenever he forgets something, for example not recalling that he told Roger they were going swimming, he is visibly discouraged. He is fighting to remember day-to-day events, but even more is fighting to remember his last case.  He muses “I need to finish with you before I die,” as if this is the final task he needs to accomplish before he is free to depart earth.

The case is important to him because he is convinced he must have made a terrible mistake; otherwise, he reasons, he wouldn’t have abruptly left London and retreated to the countryside. His former associate Watson wrote the case up in a way he knows must be inaccurate, and he wants to correct the error. It’s not so much concern about the public record, though. The only audience that needs an accurate account is him. He is in a sense interrogating himself, a detective trying to solve a mystery that lies within.

I think we all tend to return to certain crucial events in the past and try to remember exactly what happened. For me, the time from 1992-1994 when my marriage was ending is the time I go back to the most. I question myself, though not as intensely as Holmes did. I think about what happened, what choices on my part contributed to the breakup, and what if anything I could have done otherwise. What I think I am after–and what Holmes seems to be after–is self-knowledge.

We all observe ourselves, noticing what we do day-to-day, wondering why we were irritable with one person or avoided another. We are biased, excusing our worst moments, but once in a while we are able to lift the curtain of self-justification and see ourselves accurately. Sometimes, our self-serving bias fades with time, so looking back can give clearer vision than we had when events were freshly coined. For Holmes, whose logical rigor quickly shreds self-justification, vision is blocked by another curtain, the curtain of forgetting.

Little by little, Holmes remembers more of the case. He eventually recalls that he had had the opportunity to help a troubled woman but didn’t do so. He admits to Mrs. Munro, “I was fearful.” As much as it pains him to remember he had failed, he is to be admired for having pursued the truth so doggedly. It’s so easy to do the opposite; to deliberately not think about episodes that reflect badly on us until we’ve pushed them far away from consciousness. Most of us have a few regrets: always evading them leads to self-delusion, but habitually viewing them through a magnifying glass produces unnecessary misery. Maturity means looking at one’s shortcomings but not doing so too much.

The redemptive aspect of the film is that in the end Holmes shows kindness to others that he wasn’t capable of 30 years earlier. Even painful self-knowledge is useful when it goads us to choose differently the next time we are confronted with human need. Knowing our weaknesses often is good preparation for responding compassionately to those who are troubled.

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“I Grow More Intense as I Age.”

Posted on January 6, 2016 by Bob Ritzema

In earlier posts I discussed a passage in George Eliot’s novel The Mill on the Floss in which Eliot suggested that, compared to the young, the middle-aged are “half-passionate” while the elderly are “merely contemplative,” that is, without any passion at all. I suggested that, contrary to Eliot’s suggestion, the middle aged have strong passions fueled by disillusionment and increased awareness of mortality, and old age “has become second only to the late teens and early 20s as a time of self-discovery, opportunity, and passion….”

It seems audacious to suggest that the elderly have intense emotions and passionate interests to a degree comparable to the young. Yet some writers who have tried to describe what it is like to be in one’s 80s report examples of strong emotions and riveting interests. Marie de Hennezel, a French therapist who wrote The Art of Growing Old: Aging with Grace, describes her 85-year-old friend Michel, a former lung specialist “who was passionate about morpho-psychology.” Responding to a languid drawing and nostalgic poem he gave her, de Hennezel told him, “You’re still quite a romantic!” Michel replied, “It’s terrible to be old in other people’s eyes, when you feel as if you’re still eighteen!” He went on to tell her that “His heart…had remained young, and he still had the emotions and urges of a young man….” de Hennezel describes his eyes as being “full of mischief, joy, life, and astonishment.”

Another intense and passionate oldster was playwright and Jungian analyst Florida Scott-Maxwell, who penned The Measure of My Days, a reflection on aging, when she was in her eighties. She wrote the following:

“Age puzzles me. I thought it was a quiet time. My seventies were interesting, and fairly serene, but my eighties are passionate. I grow more intense as I age. To my own surprise I burst out with hot conviction. Only a few years ago I enjoyed my tranquility; now I am so disturbed by the outer world and by human quality in general that I want to put things right, as though I still owed a debt to life.”

We usually think of the oldest old as preoccupied with the years gone by, with heaven, or, more prosaically, with the state of their digestive functions. Yet here is Scott-Maxwell, thinking of none of these but of the troubles of the world and the need to put them right. These are indeed troubled days, reminiscent of another time when things were in disarray. As the prophet Joel puts it,

“The seeds are shriveled
beneath the clods.[a]
The storehouses are in ruins,
the granaries have been broken down,
for the grain has dried up. (Joel 1:17, NIV)”

Joel calls the people to repent, and promises that God would send “grain, new wine, and olive oil” sufficient to feed his people. God also promises the following:

“And afterward,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your old men will dream dreams,
your young men will see visions. (Joel 2:28)”

Old men dreaming dreams, young men seeing visions. Old and young joined in seeing the world as it can be, seeing what would happen if we all joined in pursuing justice and displaying love to each other. Yes, the old can dream that dream. We can be passionate about seeking the Peaceable Kingdom. I’d like to be one of those seekers, growing ever more passionate as I age.

The Peaceable Kingdom, by Edward Hicks

The Peaceable Kingdom, by Edward Hicks

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Friendships: Who Stays and Who Goes

Posted on December 28, 2015 by Bob Ritzema

I wrote earlier about how friendships change over the years. After our children leave home and we retire (or just work less), most of us have more time to spend with friends. When we reach that point, some of us reconnect with friends from earlier in life–high school friends, college friends, old roommates, former colleagues, and people we lived next to or went to church with. There are more people from the past that have permanently left our lives than people that remain or return, though, even in this social media era in which it is easier than ever to reconnect. In my earlier post I asked why I’ve maintained strong friendships with some people but don’t have much interest in reconnecting with others. I don’t have a satisfying answer, but have some thoughts.

The two friends I have stayed connected to the longest are Dave, a junior high/high school friend, and Tom, whom I met my second year of graduate school. It makes sense to me that Tom and I have stayed close. We are both psychologists, attended the same church while we were in grad school, and got to know each other extremely well when our families shared a house my last year of school. When Tom completed his studies, he moved to Grand Rapids, the city where I had grown up, and when I went there to visit my parents I usually stopped by to see him. We continued to have a lot in common: besides professional similarities, we were both parents, were interested in exploring religious questions, and had marriages end badly. We remained friends because we are similar, know other well, and enjoy each other’s company.

It’s a little harder to figure out why Dave and I stayed friends. He went to an out-of-state university and moved a couple thousand miles farther away once he graduated. He has a small business specializing in photography and technical services, a very different career from mine. I’ve seen him only three times since he moved to California in the early 1970s. The odds were probably against our staying in touch. Yet we had seen the world similarly back when we were growing up. We bonded on a two-week camping trip to Canada’s maritime provinces right before our junior year of college. And we corresponded. Dave did a wonderful job writing lengthy letters every six months or so describing what was going on in his life. He especially liked to write about places he had visited. My letters were paltry by comparison, but I always wrote back. I think both the writing and reading has been quite enjoyable to both of us and neither of us wanted to end our exchange.

From my junior high yearbook. Dave is in the middle, on the left

From my junior high yearbook. Dave is in the middle, on the left

That’s something of why I stayed connected to these two longstanding friends. What relationships ended, and why? There are scores of friendships that didn’t last, but let me describe just one. Besides Dave, I had two other very close friends in high school, Phil and Ben. They went to the same college I did, so we stayed friends for another four years. After graduation, though, we lost track of each other. I’ve long wondered what happened to them. My college class had a reunion a few months ago, and I went. I hoped that one or both of them would be there.

At the reunion (though not with Ben).

At the reunion (though not with Ben).

Ben was, and we talked. He was always an excellent tennis player, and after college was a tennis pro out in Washington state for 10 years. Then he returned to Grand Rapids. He gave up tennis in order to play golf, and that’s what his life has centered around for the past thirty-some years. He was amiable, but, once he found out I don’t play golf, there wasn’t much else we had to talk about. Thinking back, we were headed in different directions even during the last few years we were in college. I suspect we just lost interest in what each other was doing.

So, in my case, having a close connection at some point in the past contributed to my maintaining friendships, but it wasn’t enough. There had to be something that continued to reinforce the connection, whether that was similar life trajectories as with Tom or a shared commitment to corresponding, as with Dave. Friends like Ben with whom I no longer share interests disappear from my life, or I from theirs, no matter how much we once meant to each other.

I’m curious about whether others who are in mid- or late adulthood have had a similar experience with friendships. Who has stayed in your life, and who has dropped out? What do you think determined the eventual outcome of your youthful friendships?

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Older Adulthood: The Second Great Age of Passion

Posted on December 12, 2015 by Bob Ritzema

I wrote recently about a passage in George Elliot’s novel The Mill on the Floss suggesting that middle-aged adults are particularly well-equipped to assist adolescents and young adults through their times of emotional turmoil. Elliot reasons that the middle-aged are prepared to help because they are past their own peak years of intense emotions, but still have vivid memories of those tumultuous times. I pointed out that middle age can itself be a time of emotional turmoil–that’s what a midlife crisis is, after all. Perhaps it is the struggles of midlife more than memories of their youth that motivate the middle-aged to offer assistance to  the young.

Eliot implies that, unlike the middle-aged, we older adults no longer have even an attenuated level of passion in our lives. According to her, our memories have become merely contemplative, meaning that we’re just thinking about strong emotions, not having them. Is that true? Are older adults free of the sort of passions that characterize the young?

Throughout life, passion is a result of struggle. For the young, the struggle is to attain an identity and become a functioning adult. For the middle-aged, the struggle is to find meaning despite disillusionment and a heightened sense of mortality. Older adults have not traditionally been thought to face much in the way of struggle. The 1950s ideal of the Golden Years was predicated at least in part on assuming that older adults had few struggles. Supposedly, the elderly would have idyllic lives in which they faced no issues bigger than what golf course to play or what buffet to patronize.

If this was ever what it was like to be old, it certainly is no longer accurate for most older adults.  For one thing, given that most recent retirees don’t have either the generous retirement pensions that were commonplace a few decades ago or adequate savings, many older adults will face more financial struggles than the previous generation. Even more important, though, has been a change in how we view older adulthood. Rather than considering post-retirement years to be an unexpected bonus, many of us have reason to expect that, absent some disaster, we will live at least another decade, perhaps quite a bit more. This expectation brings with it a desire to do something meaningful. Some even see this pursuit of meaning as a duty. Ken Dychtwald writes:

“You have a responsibility to keep yourself vital by thinking about what you want to be and by thinking about how you want to use your life. Remember…if you are not going to die soon, then you are not old. If you are not old, you have many years left and you must decide what to make of them.” (A New Purpose, p. 73)

Dychtwald’s book and others like it read much like the books about finding one’s calling or meaning in life aimed at young adults. Both genres talk about self-exploration as a means of deciding what to do. Both talk about finding what one is passionate about. Both portray potential readers as standing at a pivotal moment in life, one where there are few constraints and many possibilities.

So, perhaps age 65 and thereabouts has become second only to the late teens and early 20s as a time of self-discovery, opportunity, and passion. Rather than losing all passion–as Eliot believed was the natural course for older adults–the current crop of oldsters often have old passions renewed or find new passions altogether. Perhaps that gives us particular affinity to emerging adults. More than other age groups, we and they believe we can make the world a better place and have the energy and time to do something to accomplish that dream. Let’s start thinking of older adulthood as the second great age of passion.

Gordon Cosby, an older adult who stayed passionate to the end. Photo by Kevin Clark/The Washington Post

Gordon Cosby, an older adult who stayed passionate to the end. Photo by Kevin Clark/The Washington Post

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Spiritual Simplification, or Jesus at the Door with Burgers, Fries, and a Drink

Posted on December 3, 2015 by Bob Ritzema

Several months ago, I started a series of posts in response to theologian Lewis Joseph Sherrill’s contention that simplification is the primary psychological task of late adulthood. Sherrill described simplification as “distinguishing the more important from the less important, getting rid of the less important or relegating it to the margin; and elevating the more important to the focus of feeling, thought, and action.” Older adults simplify their status by stepping back and assuming less prominent roles. They simplify physically as a result of their aging bodies. They simplify materially as they deal with the objects they have accumulated.  They simplify their character by increasingly focusing on core elements of personality. Finally, says Sherrill, they simplify spiritually.

Sherrill suggests there are two complementary processes operating in spiritual simplification. First, there is a “decreasing interest in those religious values which the individual finds to be marginal in his religious philosophy.” Thus, for example, in the realm of doctrine, “a person who once had been absorbed in the minute details of an elaborate system of doctrine, finds himself sorting his beliefs into some order of relative importance, cherishing some and neglecting others.” In the realm of religious practices, a person who had been “exceedingly zealous for this or that activity which he considered it his duty to follow” may drop that activity after discovering that it is an impediment rather than a help in attaining intimacy with God.

Second, though, the person may focus more intensely on some aspects of belief or practice. In this, the person “is focusing upon the center in the total field of spiritual values, and doing whatever is possible to keep that center clear, warm, and active.”

There is one long-term friend in particular whom I’ve observed undergoing considerable spiritual simplification. He was raised in a conservative Baptist church that emphasized “don’ts”–don’t drink, don’t have sex outside marriage, don’t participate in worldly entertainments. For many years, he felt he didn’t measure up. His image of God was not so much the angry, wrathful deity professed by the Westboro Baptist strain of fundamentalism as it was God with a frown on his face, constantly disappointed in human shortcomings and perhaps shaking his head back and forth in exasperation.

During the past decade, my friend’s view of God has changed considerably. He discovered Brennan Manning, who writes that we can never expect to get it all together, but that is fine since God loves us ragamuffins. A year or two later, he decided to focus on the teachings of Jesus to the exclusion of everything else–he was, as Sherrill described, “focusing upon the center.” He started writing imaginative essays in which he explored his understanding of God and of himself. In one piece, he imagined himself before the devil, who pointed at him and said “NO!” He felt shame and fear. Then, he imagined himself before Christ, who looked at him and said “YES!” The shame was washed away.

hamburger-fries-drinkThe most recent writing he shared with me describes a time in graduate school when he was quite lonely. He was single then, as was the pastor of his church. The two of them started meeting together for dinner. One week one of them would take a TV dinner to the other’s home, the next week the other would reciprocate. Looking back, my friend views the pastor coming to his house as having spiritual significance:
“I remember so looking forward to his arrival to my lonely place when he came.  I have often thought since then about how he was following Christ’s example…. When he would come over to my place with his TV dinner and soda, it was always like Jesus coming over with hamburgers, fries, and drinks.”

My friend has simplified his faith. The heavy furniture of doctrine and duty has been pushed out of the way to make way for Christ, who comes to affirm him and bring to him the sacramental meal–the bag containing burgers, fries, and a drink. Would that I could simplify so well.

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Is Midlife a Time of Calm or of Turmoil?

Posted on November 25, 2015 by Bob Ritzema

I ran across an interesting quote on middle age by George Eliot. She wrote:

“The middle aged, who have lived through their strongest emotions, but are yet in the time when memory is still half passionate and not merely contemplative, should surely be a sort of natural priesthood whom life has disciplined and consecrated to be the refuge and rescue of early stumblers and victims of self-despair. Most of us, at some moment of our young lives would have welcomed a priest of that natural order in any sort of canonicals or uncanonicals, but had to scramble upward into all the difficulties of nineteen entirely without such aid, as Maggie did.”

The quote is from Eliot’s novel The Mill on the Floss, published in 1860. Maggie Tulliver, the novel’s heroine, struggles with tumultuous feelings and conflicted loyalties. She could benefit from someone capable of soothing her tumult and providing her with perspective on her troubles. She could, suggests Eliot, benefit from the wisdom of someone middle-aged: someone who is past the years of greatest emotional turmoil but can still remember past upheavals well enough to empathize. Eliot describes the middle-aged as a “natural priesthood,” prepared by their past struggles to minister to those like nineteen-year-old Maggie who are still in youth’s whirlwind.    

Turmoil or Not? Image from health.howstuffworks.com

Turmoil or Not? Image from health.howstuffworks.com

Eliot’s view of middle age seems strange to us. Isn’t middle age itself a time of turmoil? What of the mid-life crisis–the angst felt by many in their forties whose early dreams have been eclipsed and for whom mortality is shading life like never before? Is such a person merely “half-passionate”? Don’t some of us become “stumblers and victims of self-despair” just as readily in middle age as we did when young?

I wrote earlier about the decline in life-satisfaction that occurs in middle adulthood. In passing though those years, many of us never found a salve sufficient to soothe the no-longer-young-but-not-quite-old soul. Yet that isn’t the whole story.  Midlife is also the time that many individuals become more generative. They are less focused on their own personal projects for success and more focused on guiding the next generation. They start giving themselves away in order to benefit children, grandchildren, younger colleagues, nephews and nieces, or other young people who could use an infusion of support and wisdom.

These two processes–disillusionment with one’s life and the desire to assist others–seem incompatible. Isn’t the first one self-focused and the second other-focused? Perhaps, though, a clearing-out of illusions about the self is just what is needed to get to the point where we can give ourselves to others. If, as Eliot suggests, we are consecrated into a natural priesthood of middle age, this consecration occurs precisely because life–or, for those of us more spiritually inclined, because God–has taught us that we will be gone one day, both our successes and failures forgotten. Freed of self-importance, we are well-prepared to minister to others.

So, the middle-aged may not be free of struggles to the degree that Eliot thought, but their very struggles are what help them become the “natural priesthood” she imagines. What, though, of those of us who are a decade or more removed from midlife’s struggles? Eliot implies that for we oldsters passion has faded completely and all we can do now is remember our youthful enthusiasms from great distance. Is she right? I’ll consider that question in another post.

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Update: So you’re retired, what do you do all day? by Bob Lowry

Posted on November 21, 2015 by Bob Ritzema

Bob Lowry is one of my favorite bloggers on the topic of retirement. This is a nice recent post of his on the subject of how retirees spend their time. He challenges the notion that retirement is lived “on the margins,” an idea that stems from the notion that we are our work and, therefore, retiring cuts out the heart of who we are. Good job, Bob!

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Simplification of Character

Posted on November 11, 2015 by Bob Ritzema

dilbert-character

I’ve been thinking recently about the psychological task of simplification as it pertains to late life. I’m following the outline provided by twentieth-century theologian Lewis Joseph Sherrill, who says that simplification involves “distinguishing the more important from the less important, getting rid of the less important or relegating it to the margin; and elevating the more important to the focus of feeling, thought, and action. (from The Struggle of the Soul, p. 130)” Following Sherrill, I’ve already discussed simplification of status, of the body, and of possessions. Sherrill adds that there is a deeper simplification that occurs in many older adults, which he calls simplification of character. Sherrill summarizes what happens as follows:

“Disguises and pretenses drop away, and the self is more and more stripped bare, to be seen for what it really is.”

What is character? We often think of a person of character as having moral excellence or being authentic (Scott Adams, in the Dilbert comic strip I’ve included, does a wonderful take-down of pretentions regarding character). More broadly, though, character means the psychological make-up of the individual; in this sense it’s a rough synonym for “personality.” Sherrill seems to be alluding to this psychological make-up, particularly to some core or essential disposition of the person. He calls such a disposition a ‘philosophy of life.” He suggests there are six types of philosophy that guide adults (as well as some immature philosophies more characteristic of childhood but that in some cases persist into adulthood). The six, along with the primary focus of each, are:

• Philosophies of Dependence [focus: relying on others or resisting such reliance]
• Philosophies of Role [focus: one’s gender role]
• Philosophies of Judgment [focus: evaluating one’s goodness or lack thereof]
• Philosophies of the Psyche [focus: being a self and individuating from others]
• Philosophies of Materialism [focus: material objects and one’s relationship to them]
• Philosophies of Relationship [focus: connections with other people]

Sherrill thought that the second, third, and fourth of these foci couldn’t be sustained into later adulthood. I’m not so sure he’s right about that. For each of these philosophies I’ve known people sixty or older who had this focus as central to their character. In any event, when the older adult simplifies, his or her core disposition is no longer muddied by being mixed with other prominent dispositions, so that its essence shines forth ever more purely. Thus, to take the first of these, as they age many people with a philosophy of dependence drop all pretense that they can take care of themselves and become increasingly reliant on someone else to direct and assist them. Others, who are counter-dependent, become increasingly unwilling to accept help of any sort and adopt a lifestyle designed to rebuff any assistance or even any mutual reliance. As with dependence-independence, opposite poles can be found in each of these philosophies.

Sherrill described each of these dispositions but didn’t give actual examples of how any of them played out in adults as they age. I’ve tried to think about older people I’ve known to see whether I could identify this simplification process taking place. It took a while, but I came up with examples of simplification occurring in most of these focal areas. For example, I remember a man who was prone to be dependent but made some effort to deal with problems on his own; after he retired, he stopped trying to cope on his own and became totally reliant on his wife. A woman whose femininity had long manifested itself in being very maternal became even more so as she aged, trying to mother practically everyone with whom she came in contact. And a man who had always been quite confident in his own opinion (which I think indicates he has a philosophy of judgment) became with age someone who couldn’t have a conversation without asserting how he was right and others were wrong about something or another. Though I could think of several examples of simplification of character, some older adults that came to mind didn’t seem to have undergone such a change. As with other areas of simplification, the simplification of character doesn’t seem to be a universal feature of aging.

Personally, I would like to simplify by living more and more according to a philosophy of relationship. There’s nothing more appealing than an older adult whose very essence is to love others. One of my grandfathers was that way, and his grandchildren still tell stories of how special it was to spend time with them. Despite my manifold mistakes and failings, my life will have been meaningful if my grandchildren tell such stories about me some day.

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Complicated Grief

Posted on October 31, 2015 by Bob Ritzema

There was recently an article in the New York Times about complicated grief. Virtually everyone experiences intense suffering after losing someone they are close to, but most don’t have that intense suffering continue on for over a year without lessening at all. That happens with complicated grief, though; indeed, it can persist for many years with no respite. It’s like being buffeted by a hurricane that never passes.

There are other features common to complicated grief. Often, there is intense yearning or longing as well as intense emotional pain. The bereaved person may have ongoing numbness, disbelief, or anger. The person is often preoccupied with the deceased and can’t imagine life without him or her. There is sometimes ongoing rumination about the conditions under which the loss occurred, and the person may get stuck dwelling on something they think they could have done to prevent the death. The bereaved may want to die or think that life is no longer meaningful. The person often isolates her- or himself from others and makes little effort to engage in age-appropriate life tasks.

The Times article notes that a 2009 German study found the prevalence of complicated grief among those who were bereaved to be 7 percent, with a slight increase (to 9%) among those 61 and older. Rates were higher if the person lost was a spouse or child, and also if the cause of death was cancer.

Dr. Katherine Sheer, a psychiatrist who directs the Center for Complicated Grief at Columbia University School of Social Work, has worked with colleagues to develop a treatment for complicated grief. As described in this paper, the treatment is conducted during the course of 16 sessions for research purposes, though clinicians using this approach can vary the length as needed. A key feature of the approach is having the client visualize and tell the story of living through or learning of the person’s death. The focus here is on experiencing the emotions from that time and integrating them with rational knowledge that the person has died. Here are some other components of the treatment:

  • identifying and working towards a personal goal unrelated to the grief or the deceased.
  • bringing a support person to therapy; this person is used to re-establish the client’s often-frayed social connections
  • reviewing photos or mementos of the deceased
  • talking about both positive and negative aspects of the relationship

The clients suffering from complicated grief with whom I’ve worked have mainly been widowed, though I’ve also worked with some adults who have lost a child and a few children who have lost a parent. Sometimes the bereaved spouse had never had complete trust in any human being other than the partner that was lost and feels hopeless about ever establishing such trust with anyone else. Sometimes the person’s main preoccupation is trying to figure out what he or she could have done to prevent the loss. Complicated grief isn’t just experienced by those who had a close and loving relationship with the deceased: I remember one client who believed her late husband had ruined her life and more than anything wanted to reach beyond the grave to let him know what harm he had done to her.

I encourage anyone whose grief has not abated in the course of a year or more and who recognizes themselves in the above description to seek therapy. You can be helped toward resolving feelings of grief and moving out of the darkened, closed-off parlor of your mourning back into light.

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